Tribe House Blog

Paul Young rattles Bottega

Well, the conversation with Paul Young (author of the Shack) the other night at Bottega really seemed to shake the nest (in the best sense of that phrase). There has been a flood of emails, comments, blog posts, and requests for more of these types of events since he spoke.

This event was Part 2 of the Lille Gard Discussion series that we are hosting leading up to the Lille Gard Festival on the Bottega property June 30 – July 1 with a focus on Arts, Faith and Justice. This “Conversation with Paul Young” had a real emphasis on how this book (which was a form of art) had such a massive impact on so many people around the world. Paul calls this accidental success “one of God’s biggest jokes” and talked about the journey about how 4 years ago he went from cleaning toilets to having a NY Times best-selling book spread all around the world in 41 languages. All this on a $200 marketing budget.

His humility shone through while Graham Ord interviewed him & took live questions via Twitter. A few of us got a chance to hang out with him for lunch earlier that day where he shared some fascinating stories on how this fictional book has allowed him to speak at New Age conventions, atheist conferences, mega churches, and prisons. As a result, thousands have been impacted and continue to be rattled by some of the perspectives Young introduces on the topics of faith, art, God, hell,pain, and a plethora of others.

One of our favourite responses from the evening was from a local artist who said: “I feel like I’ve been walking on my knees my entire life until tonight…”

Lots of people have been asking for the audio or video of the evening & we will let you know when that’s available (because we captured some great video). Feel free to sign up on our mailing list if you’d like to be notified (you’ll see the Newsletter signup on the right hand column at the bottom).

We’d love to hear your thoughts on how this event impacted you – feel free to leave a comment or link to your blog post.

I never use these words but here they are genuine: Tuesday night with W. Paul Young was life changing. Thank-you for bringing him to Kelowna, I’m so fortunate to have had the opportunity to hear him speak. The energy was powerful in that beautiful room.